Has Ubisoft's DRM Gone Too Far?

[Nebor]

Gotta bring back this awesome post to reply to this, lol



By your logic "all" video games should go away entirely since console games can be pirated as well. Oh, and while we're at it, we should get rid of all computer software since it can also be pirated..

I wasn't talking about logic, I was talking about feelings.

 

[mmntech]

I generally avoid ubi soft; and I used to avoid ea until they purchased bioware. To be honest while I dislike EA; they are no where as bad as ubi soft and when I have had issues they (customer support) have been very responsive and helpful - often faster than valve since you can actually reach a real person (I think I used chat).
-
ubi soft not only has harsh drm; the few time I've tried to reach out to customer support it doesnt' exist. Quite frankly ubi soft likes to talk about poor sales on the pc; but they are shooting themselves in the foot. If they would use something like steamworks (which a lot of folks seem to dislike) it would be good enough for me.

EA learned their lesson on DRM the hard way. All that controversy over Spore. It was the first time casual gamers had encountered DRM that draconian. Got EA a lot of negative press. Fortunately, they chose to abandon it.

Ubisoft generates a lot of casual shovelware on the console platform. That's what keeps them in business. Plus they do have some once prestigious franchises that keep them going, such Tom Clancy, Assassin's Creed, Settlers, etc. However, they tend to milk these ideas until they're well past their sell-by date, and cease being relevant.

Ubisoft always reminds me of a snooty, rude French waiter. Someone who has nothing but contempt for their customers. But the allure of their good food (or franchises) keeps people coming back for more abuse. I guess we're all a little masochistic.

 

[PowerYoga]

By your logic "all" video games should go away entirely since console games can be pirated as well. Oh, and while we're at it, we should get rid of all computer software since it can also be pirated..

Not sure how you even manage to get that from what I said, but it's the internet and I realize you're entitled to your inner troll.

 

[mindcycle]

Not sure how you even manage to get that from what I said, but it's the internet and I realize you're entitled to your inner troll.

lol. No, I was using your reply to reply to Nebor's post, sorry if I confused the situation by doing that.

 

[mindcycle]

I wasn't talking about logic, I was talking about feelings.

Got ya, and I do understand where you're coming from. Piracy is nothing that I personally condone or support either. I buy my games to help support developers and the industry so that we have games to play in the future. I simply think there is a better way to deal with piracy that doesn't involve punishing paying customers while allowing pirates to have the superior experience.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow. Not like I was purchasing any of Ubisoft's games to begin with, but now, I definately won't. It reminds me of Bioshock's original DRM scheme, that limited to 5 installs or something. I was afraid to install it, for fear I would have problems requiring a re-install, or desire to upgrade my computer, so the game sat on the shelf and I never played it.

Crap like this is why I don't even really bother to buy PC games anymore. I bought Skyrim for $60, because it was supposed to be good. I was happy to find out that it was a Steam game. It is my first Steam activation.

 

[paperfist]

I will never again buy a game with DRM like that. I bought Test Drive Unlimited on DigitalRiver and after 2 or 3 installs I got locked out. I spent weeks trying to get a new key from Atari or DigitalRiver. Eventually one of them gave in and gave me a key. And then that key expired after one install. Now I just pirate the game which I paid for fair and square.

These days you can't even be sure if certain games have that type of DRM. Just as the article mentions, 'From Dust' was suppose to launch without it. Those that purchased it found out a few days later that they were duped and it did have said DRM.

 

[thespyder]

EA learned their lesson on DRM the hard way. All that controversy over Spore. It was the first time casual gamers had encountered DRM that draconian. Got EA a lot of negative press. Fortunately, they chose to abandon it.

Ubisoft generates a lot of casual shovelware on the console platform. That's what keeps them in business. Plus they do have some once prestigious franchises that keep them going, such Tom Clancy, Assassin's Creed, Settlers, etc. However, they tend to milk these ideas until they're well past their sell-by date, and cease being relevant.

Ubisoft always reminds me of a snooty, rude French waiter. Someone who has nothing but contempt for their customers. But the allure of their good food (or franchises) keeps people coming back for more abuse. I guess we're all a little masochistic.

It's interesting because I haven't seen very much in the way of EA crumbling to popular opinion. I find it hard to credit that they did it over DRM.

 

[Ancalagon44]

So glad I havent bought a Ubisoft game in a while. They dont deserve my money.

My only regret is that they will still blame poor sales on piracy - pity they wont accept that their DRM is causing their lost sales.

 

[Maximilian]

I wish people would just bail rather than bitch about property owners trying to defend their property & rights. I'd rather PC gaming go away entirely than to allow even 1 person to pirate a game.

Ive cracked it!

Nebor is clearly Jack Thompson!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)

Whats it like being hated by so many people Jack? You're a bit like the modern day hitler in that respect

 

[Red Hawk]

Yup. I tolerate installation activations that require online connections like Steamworks, but Ubisoft's always-on DRM is too much. I've boycotted their PC games until they remove that crap, which is a real shame considering how many times Assassin's Creed has had a nice sale on Steam.

Oh and uh Maximilian...Godwin's Law much?

 

[PrincessFrosty]

The answer is YES, and that nobody should ever buy anything from Ubisoft again, ever. Vote with your wallet.

This

I like how they call it a "rare occasion"... LOL, seriously? Reinstalling a game 4 times is rare? Most of my games on Steam have been reinstalled at least 10 times.

Yeah I'm in a similar position, because of a really tiny C: (SSD) but a really fast internet connection (50mbit, soon to be 120mbit) it means that it's realistic for me to keep only a few games installed at a time and cycle them when I'm done playing. Sometimes I rebuild my computer, install Beta OS's, I switch graphics cards legitimately every 18 months anyway...not to mention other hardware changes that might trigger the update.

You realize that hard drive space is very cheap, right? I've never uninstalled a Steam game. I keep like 150 games installed, and most of them I've never even played. I'll get to them eventually...

Actually that depends on what sort of drive you decide to use, many gamers such as myself made the switch to expensive solid state drives because we want the best performance and load times for our games, if you buy something like the Intel 510 you're paying something like £450 for 250Gb of storage space, that's approximately £1.80 per Gb, when you install a game like say Rage which is 22Gb that costs you approx £40 which is actually MORE than the game itself costs.

I have a 120Gb OCZ Vertex 3 SSD and it serves me very well but space is an issue and my steam list is constantly being cycled to accommodate that, games not being able to tailor themselves to my behaviour because of meaningless restrictions devalues the game to me, and at the same time it makes the cracked copy more appealing as a method of playing the game.

 

[BrightCandle]

If only gamers would just wake up and resist the urge to buy games that had this progressively worse and worse DRM. Its really simple to send a company a message by arranging for and then executing a total boycott of sales of a loved game with bad DRM. If it hits their wallet they'll change their tune or go out of business. But as the MW2 boycott showed gamers are not in control of their urges for luxury goods.

 

[pontifex]

what was the problem with From Dust? I bought it on release and it worked perfectly fine. It was a subpar game, but it worked fine.

Never had a problem with Ubi's always on DRM and I own at least 2 Ubi games that use it.

Why are you people reinstalling games 4 times or hell, 10 times like someone else said, within a short period of time?

there is no way this is normal.the only time i've reinstalled a game was after I had to rebuild my system (extremely rare), I haven't played it in a long time and I want to play it again (fairly rare), or just recently when I found out that the patch for Crysis 2 broke the loading of save games. I uninstalled and reinstalled without the patch.

that said, i'm not agreeing with install limits or DRM at all, but as always, some of you make it out to be way more than it is.

 

[ramj70]

@pontifex

You don't have to reinstall to use up your activations. I flashed my bios and then had to reactivate. When I changed my CPU I had to reactivate again. My three limit activation is now used up. I'm trying to resolve the issue now ubisoft.

 

[Mem]

If only gamers would just wake up and resist the urge to buy games that had this progressively worse and worse DRM. Its really simple to send a company a message by arranging for and then executing a total boycott of sales of a loved game with bad DRM. If it hits their wallet they'll change their tune or go out of business. But as the MW2 boycott showed gamers are not in control of their urges for luxury goods.

If gamers don't buy games then they will be no longer gamers ,or at the very least you are limiting them on choice of games,personally its something I have to live with as a gamer.

I buy a game and agree to their policy,DRM etc....if you don't like DRM etc then not much you can do apart from not buying the game or send them an email about your concerns etc...

To be honest never had any real issues of the years or should I say decades,infact only ever had Bioshock give me any issue when their server was shut down due to being overloaded for online registration before you could play the game,I finally got to play Bioshock 3 -4 hours later.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Never had a problem with Ubi's always on DRM and I own at least 2 Ubi games that use it.

A far bigger issues gamers face is this sort of complacence amongst fellow gamers. We get that some of you have never had a problem but some of us believe that it's not right by principle and that not everyone shares your experience.

It's helpful if people could operate in a way that assumes it could actually happen to them, and discourage this sort of behaviour by the developers whether it hurts them directly or not.

 

[Mem]

A far bigger issues gamers face is this sort of complacence amongst fellow gamers. We get that some of you have never had a problem but some of us believe that it's not right by principle and that not everyone shares your experience.

It's helpful if people could operate in a way that assumes it could actually happen to them, and discourage this sort of behaviour by the developers whether it hurts them directly or not.

Problem is sales are their bread and butter,worst case scenario is all PC games companies going out of business,who wins then?..I can understand companies protecting their interests and I can understand gamers that have issues,somewhere you have to find that middle ground that helps both sides.

My attitude is I will support PC gaming(regardless of DRM) by buying games,piracy is one thing I have and will avoid at all costs so you can't really blame gamers in that situation.

 

[BrightCandle]

Put another way DRM has never helped you as a paying customer, it has no value to you and yet part of the price of the product you paid for went into adding it into the product.

Today I got a call from a friend saying he had some music on his iPad and it wouldn't sink to iTunes, and he wanted it on his iPod. Turns out his iPad account is different and unlinked with iTunes and I'll be damned if I can work out how to merge the two accounts so he can have all his music on all his devices. That is a real world average joe user being totally confused by modern day "doesn't hurt anyone" DRM. That DRM is about as mild as it comes really.

I think the exception to the rule is that you haven't been impacted by it, because its everywhere and it breaks all the time. Many people just think it can't be done because they don't know better, but actually its because their rights have been restricted.

 

[BrightCandle]

Problem is sales are their bread and butter,worst case scenario is all PC games companies going out of business,who wins then?..I can understand companies protecting their interests and I can understand gamers that have issues,somewhere you have to find that middle ground that helps both sides.

My attitude is I will support PC gaming(regardless of DRM) by buying games,piracy is one thing I have and will avoid at all costs so you can't really blame gamers in that situation.

All the piracy figures are completely made up. The ones used to support SOPA for example are nearly 3 decades old and have no science behind them at all, because the guy that first said it made them up. Removing DRM is not going to kill PC gaming there is just no evidence with decent peer review that supports that, because its not true.

Nothing kills a gaming companies faster than poor service and rubbish games. Rather than spending development time adding features we don't want (DRM) they can spend it adding features we do want. Its no coincidence that the great games sell better than rubbish ones, regardless of the DRM used. Which is about the greatest counter argument against DRM there is because the real world evidence shows it doesn't help your sales, but clearly from around the world you can see it makes their customers pretty angry.

 

[Martimus]

Problem is sales are their bread and butter,worst case scenario is all PC games companies going out of business,who wins then?..I can understand companies protecting their interests and I can understand gamers that have issues,somewhere you have to find that middle ground that helps both sides.

My attitude is I will support PC gaming(regardless of DRM) by buying games,piracy is one thing I have and will avoid at all costs so you can't really blame gamers in that situation.

If they go out of business, they will be replaced by another company that makes games. The more bad practices that get punished, the less likely future companies will use them.

I don't understand the sentiment that we have to support a company that does practices we don't like, because they won't be able to continue them if they go out of business. That is kind of the point of not supporting them. Other companies will make games. CDProjekt is a new company that is making high quality games, and more will pop up as well. If anything the popularity of video games will make it easier for new talent to make new games.

 

[pontifex]

A far bigger issues gamers face is this sort of complacence amongst fellow gamers. We get that some of you have never had a problem but some of us believe that it's not right by principle and that not everyone shares your experience.

It's helpful if people could operate in a way that assumes it could actually happen to them, and discourage this sort of behaviour by the developers whether it hurts them directly or not.

way to focus on 1 small part of my post. but then again, thats normal for people on forums or with an agenda.

 

[Mem]

If they go out of business, they will be replaced by another company that makes games. The more bad practices that get punished, the less likely future companies will use them.

I don't understand the sentiment that we have to support a company that does practices we don't like, because they won't be able to continue them if they go out of business. That is kind of the point of not supporting them. Other companies will make games. CDProjekt is a new company that is making high quality games, and more will pop up as well. If anything the popularity of video games will make it easier for new talent to make new games.

I have already stated had no issues with DRM etc..so you are asking me to punish a company that has caused me no issues?..if I had a problem I would do what any gamer does and try find the cause and fix,if that was not possible then I might be weary of their next product,end of the day gamers have a choice ie you buy or don't buy its that simple in my books.

Companies come and go but you have a choice on buying or not,you can also contact them if you have that much of an issue.
Probably contacting them before deciding not to buy a game and telling them why would be the logical thing to do,at least they would know the reasons behind it.

 

[Martimus]

I have already stated had no issues with DRM etc..so you are asking me to punish a company that has caused me no issues?..if I had a problem I would do what any gamer does and try find the cause and fix,if that was not possible then I might be weary of their next product,end of the day gamers have a choice ie you buy or don't buy its that simple in my books.

Companies come and go but you have a choice on buying or not,you can also contact them if you have that much of an issue.
Probably contacting them before deciding not to buy a game and telling them why would be the logical thing to do,at least they would know the reasons behind it.

I guess you are right. I first read your comment that you will support game companies because you are afraid that no-one will make games if you don't. However I see now that you don't have any issues with any of the DRM, so you support them because it hasn't affected you yet.

I have been affected multiple times by DRM to the point I avoid certain companies. I avoid Ubisoft, Microsoft, and now EA after the effort I went into to get DA:O to actually work. Some people don't mind having to sign up for multiple accounts to play a game, but when it takes me hours of my free time just to install a game because of DRM, I definitely mind it. I don't have that much free time to give, and I sure as hell don't want to spend it jumping through hoops.

 

[Bateluer]

But as the MW2 boycott showed gamers are not in control of their urges for luxury goods.

This. We've seen time and time again, even here, that people will rage against a DRM scheme and pledge to boycott the game. Only to buy it on release day. At full retain price.

I was interested in Anno 2070 too, held off because of the three activation limit. Glad I did, if I'd bought when I originally thought about it, I'd have gone through 6 installations by now. Two hard drive failures, upgrades, etc.